Sporting events in this country have become much more than just simply an athletic contest between teams or individuals. Indeed, the social aspects or such occurrences constitute an integral, if not major, portion of the enjoyment of those in attendance. In fact, the sponsors of such engagements have felt compelled to institute rules and regulations limiting the ancillary events in order to make certain that the focus or those in attendance remains on the athletic event itself. Thus, the teams may not admit persons not holding tickets to the sporting event to sponsored parking lots regardless of whether ticket holders also ride in the cars themselves. Furthermore, the teams may also require that the partying surrounding the event absolutely stop during the game so as not to detract from the sponsored event itself.
Regardless of the exact nature of the sporting event attended, the ancillary partying, typically called tailgating, constitutes a separately enjoyable aspect of the overriding, advertised, and expected athletic contest. Naturally, during the pre- and post-game activities, the consumption of liquid and solid refreshments constitutes a centrally important aspect of the attendant conviviality. The storage, serving, preparation, and slowing of associated accoutrement for tailgating utilization presents challenges of their own. Recalling that vehicles used for transportation to a sporting event generally also serve the usual familial purposes, finding a way to use and subsequently store tailgating equipment represents an important goal to achieving a heightened level of enjoyment of this pastime activity.
Various types of equipment have found use in the past at tailgating events. Some of it simply represents home utensils or barbeques carried to a sports event and used there in much the same fashion as at home. This plan involves the gathering, combining, stowing, removing, setting up, using, cooling, cleaning, restowing, removing, and cleaning again, and replacing the various components in their usual locations, all hopefully without loss or damage. All of this, as can be imagined, can take inordinate amounts of time with the potential of leaving important items at home. Spending valuable time at the game to set up and take down the equipment, and replacing all of this stuff at home when finished. Clearly, having equipment intended specifically for tailgating will enhance the experience of the event surrounding the game, save time and effort, and help avoid the loss of and damage to the involved items.
One example of tailgating equipment appears in U.S. Pat. No. 6,814,383 to Silas Reed, Ill., et al. That patent shows a major tailgating piece of equipment with both a cooling side and a warming side. It may include, inter alia, warming drawers, a refrigerator drawer, possibly a stove, grill, crock pot, or rotisserie, a beer tan k, a beverage tank, dispensing spigots, and entertainment and water outdoor grill systems. To provide power for all of these components, the equipment may also include an electrical outdoor grill system to power all of the gadgets.
Reed et al. points out that their outdoor grill system readily submits to the placement within and removal from the back of an SUV. However, as shown, the unit barely fits within the lateral confines of that type of a vehicle. More significantly, removing it from the vehicle prior to use requires the holding of the entire weight of that equipment. Furthermore, to actually prepare it for actual use involves a person, while others are holding it up, crawling under the heavy equipment to deploy legs so that it can stand alone. Otherwise, its entire weight sits cantilevered out the back of the vehicle.
Various companies provide a piece of equipment that attaches to a trailer hitch of an SUV, for example. When not in use, the equipment sits on the outside of and adjacent to the vehicle. To make it available for party time, the user swings the unit out in an arc away from the vehicle. At all times, it remains connected to the hitch. And, that means that the unit sits outside of the vehicle, exposed to the elements and any dirt that might fly in that direction. It also provides a tempting target for thieves or vandals. Companies supplying this type of device to the public include Party King Grills, LLC., Freedom Grill Inc., and the Margaritaville grills. Another type of equipment appears in U.S. Pat. No. 7,338,104 which shows an apparatus that attaches to and rolls behind a vehicle as a trailer. Not only does it remain outside at all times, an impropitious disconnect of the trailer could cause the entire loss if the apparatus.
Other efforts to make vehicles more useful have involved attaching ramps and other such devices to the beds of pickup trucks to facilitate the on- and off-loading of heavy cargoes. They can also convert to tables. These appear in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,533,771 to S. Taylor et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 7,338,104 to P. Bejin. While tailgating might appear to possibly utilize these devices, no disclosure or teaching suggests this. Accordingly, these devices offer no genuine assistance to good times achieved through pregame parties. Accordingly, the search continues for facilely used and readily deployed and securely stowed equipment for pre- and post-game partying.